The differences between syndrome, disorder and disease

We explain the similarities and differences between these concepts.

In the field of health and psychology, the use of three key concepts is very common: syndrome, disorder and disease..

These are words with a lot of force, because at a popular level they are usually associated with lack of health and problems in the organism, some of which could be chronic and therefore not curable. However, that does not mean that in scientific, academic and health environments they are used as synonyms.. In fact, they are not.

Below we will examine the differences between disease, syndrome and disorder, but first we must clarify the meaning of the word "symptom" in order to understand all the rest.

What is a symptom?

In the field of health a symptom is the expression of an abnormal state.The symptom is the consequence of a phenomenon that is manifesting itself in a body. Thus, a symptom could be a warning sign that a patient's health may be compromised in some way, or it could be a "false alarm".

That is, a symptom can be any number of things, and the fact that they are present does not serve as definitive confirmation that someone's health is compromised: for example, a patient can say that he/she has a headache (symptom) without this being a sign that he/she has a disease..

Syndrome

A syndrome is a set of symptoms that occur together and that has been previously studied and has therefore been and has therefore been identified as a clinical picture linked to one or more health problems. Thus, in a syndrome there are a number of symptoms that occur together very frequently. However, the symptoms that make up a syndrome may vary over time and therefore the syndrome may eventually disappear.

What is the difference between a syndrome and a disease? We will now see.

The disease

The concept of disease, like that of syndrome, is a clinical entity, and therefore has to do with health problems. However, if a syndrome is nothing more than a set of symptoms already studied and identified as something that has its own entity by having a typical way of manifesting, a disease must present, in addition to one or more symptoms, or recognizable changes in the body or a known Biological cause (or both).

In other words, a syndrome, being essentially a set of symptoms, does not necessarily have to have a known cause or develop at the same time as anatomical alterations.

Thus, some syndromes may be the manifestation of a disease, but others may not, since their causes may be biological as well as, for example, social.

What is a disorder?

In generic terms, disorder can simply be understood as an alteration of the normal state of health due to a disease or not. normal state of health, whether or not due to a disease. The field in which it is most common to speak of disorders is that of mental health. A mental disorder is usually understood as a maladaptive (and therefore problematic) change affecting mental processes.

Often the term disorder is used as a looser way of referring to the disease in those cases in which the causes are not very clear and the possible anatomical alterations with which it is associated may be both a cause and a consequence. In the case of mental disorders this becomes very much the case, as it is often not very clear whether the biochemical imbalances associated with some disorders are what produce the symptoms or are a product of an interaction dynamic between the person and his or her environment.

Thus, the concept of disorder serves simply to describe the signs of the state of abnormality and altered health in which a person finds himself or herself. in which a person is found, while that of disease points to a causal relationship, because it includes the concrete causes (etiology) of the lack of health.

The disorder as the fruit of a dynamic of interaction

And what is the other way to understand the meaning of the term disorder when talking about mental disorders? Well, it is precisely the one that has to do with emphasizing the way in which the individual has related and continues to relate to the environment, instead of understanding disorder as something static, related to genetics, disease and injuries. A disorder may actually be the consequence of the fact that we have been involved in a set of situations linked to the context in which we live and which cause us to enter into a dynamic of behaviors that are detrimental to our health.

The cause of the disorder, therefore, cannot necessarily be reduced to a very specific part of the brain that functions abnormally, but could be spread over all those actions that make up a cycle: we act in a certain way because we perceive things in a certain way because we act in a certain way, and so on.

Thus, the frame of reference that helps us to know what we mean when we talk about what a disorder is is the following: Are disorders discovered by the human being, or are they constructed by the human being? Answering this question is not simple, and the nature of this debate has to do with both science and philosophy.